URGENT NEWS - THOUSANDS FLEE BURMA (r)

Subject: URGENT NEWS - THOUSANDS FLEE BURMA ARMY RAIDS
MANCHESTER GUARDIAN WEEKLY: THOUSANDS FLEE BURMA ARMY RAIDS
6 June, 1999 by Matthew Pennington
Fang District, THAILAND - Thousands of Shan villagers are fleeing their
homes in the opium-growing mountains of east Burma every week because
of
a military policy to depopulate rebel areas.
The mass relocation of more than 300,000 Shans from their homes to
ill-supplied resettlement sites next to army bases has driven thousands
into the jungles of Shan state. Bearing tales of attempts to strip their
communities of their ethnic identity and suppress their language and
culture, growing numbers are trekking illegally into Thailand to find
sanctuary.
"They [the Burmese army] are forcing us to move and won't let us grow
anything," said Lung Pan, aged 50, a Shan farmer who has fled to
Thailand.
"If they see us in the jungle or farming at our old villages, they shoot
us. They say even if they see one dog in the village, they will kill
it."
Northern Thailand has seen between 1,500 and 3,000 refugees a month pour
across the border, prompting the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees to call on Bangkok to grant temporary asylum to Shans escaping
persecution.
Colonel Yod Serk, leader of the rebel Shan State Army (SSA), which is
the
largest ethnic group still fighting for independence from Rangoon, said
last week: "The Burmese military are killing and torturing the people
because the rural villages have close links with the SSA, so they want
to
separate us."
Shan-language signs have been torn down to be replaced with ones in
Burmese, and in Lai Kah, one of the largest towns in the relocation
zone,
30 Shan temples have been torched and looted.
The current insurgency, which began three years ago, has been marked by
thousands of killings as well as the relocations, according to the
Thailand-based Shan Human Rights Foundation.
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